Get your feet wet

For my personal reading, I started to read a book called, Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson. In it, he made an interesting observation that caught my attention. He was writing about how in the book of Joshua (chapter 3), God speaks to Joshua and instructs him to have the priests who are carrying the Ark of the Covenant to walk to the water’s edge of the Jordan River and then to go stand in the river. When the priests reached the Jordan and they waded into the waters, God dammed up the river and made it possible for the priests to stand on firm, dry ground and they and the whole nation crossed the river on dry ground. Here’s the question that was posed: do you think the priests wanted God to dam up the river first? Do you think that the priests were thinking, “If God would do this first, then my feet wouldn’t get wet.” In other words, did the priests want God to act first and then they would follow?

Now, we don’t know what thoughts ran through the minds of the priests and whether or not this is what they wanted from God. I can tell you, however, that when I look at my life and the lives of those around me, that this line of thinking is exactly where we find ourselves more often than not. We find ourselves saying, “God, you move first, then I will move.” We want God to provide the sign before we move forward. We want God to provide the miracle before we act in faith. Why? Batterson answers this succinctly, “So our faith doesn’t require any faith!” Stop and think about that for a second. Many times in our lives, we find ourselves asking God to do something that is miraculous or so unmistakably clear and the reason is that we don’t want to have to have a faith that requires faith. Yet it seems like in life that more often than not it is signs follow faith rather than faith following signs.

A friend’s church decided that instead of waiting on their building to sell so they could move and build, that they would move out of the land-trapped facility they were in. They had tried to sell the building for a couple of years and never could and their growth suffered because of it. After the decision to move out and rent a bigger space, guess what happened? That’s right, the building sold.

How many stories do you know that follow this pattern? Signs follow faith.

When we step out in faith, God is honored and signs follow. Maybe it isn’t the day of, the month of, or the year of, but when we step out in faith, signs will follow. When we step into the water, the river will dry up and not before.

Here’s my question, “Are we/you/I standing at the edge of the water, waiting for it to dry up?” If we are, maybe it is time to step in and get our feet wet and see what follows.